Chapter 1 of my novel’s first draft is hopefully finished, check it out and please give me critique
Today is the Third Sunday of the Month, this means that the city of Saltpeter’s oddities, mistakes, and rarities have come together for Brunch, the national pastime of this peculiar crowd, among them are 2 librarians, a museum curator, a traveling beekeeper, a pen crafter, and about 20 other strange fellows. Take great note on the pair of drab brown haired people sitting at the very back of the train station’s restaurant. These boring sorts go by the names of Danny Jones and Danielle Jones and hold absolutely no relation to each other.
The thing about Danny Jones and Danielle Jones that is so interesting is not the fact that they share a birthday or last names despite being unrelated in any way other than a lesbian aunt 7 generations back, is the fact that these are the 2 most dull and boring individuals you will ever meet. Both have the personality of sliced bread and they aren’t much better in fashion either. There is nothing special about either Jones, they both live completely ordinary lives as shopkeepers on opposite ends of town. The most eventful thing either will do in a month is a Sunday Brunch. And yet both have managed to obtain a loving relationship with incredibly interesting people. And more interesting still is the fact that both are going to wind up dead at the end of the month.
Now to understand why this will happen, you must understand Saltpeter, importantly there are 4 cultural institutions in the city of Saltpeter, Firstly is the Library, it is one of the 3 which is actually known to the people of Saltpeter, and houses exactly 17,943 books and 67 are currently checked out. Next is the Museum of Maria Fernando, a town crazy lady who runs a museum on the way things used to be, this is the institution people like to forget, despite mattering quite a lot to the city, it has received exactly 17 visitors this month and stays afloat via Maria’s wife’s second cousin’s generous yearly donations in exchange for copies of old novels. The 3rd cultural institution is the rail station, it is on the route of the oldest train in the nation, the California Zephyr and is run by perhaps the best chef in the city, Leaf Ann Smith, capable of both killing a man and cooking in Omelette in under 20 minutes. Finally there’s the Pen shop, they sell pens, specifically fountain pens, each are hand made by a Saltpeter craftsman, it made the list because we were paid 72 Chicagoan Dollars to add it. If someone wants to stretch the definition of an institution and do a bit more bribery, they could get it up to about 20 institutions and a playhouse worth of cultural amenities, but they would also have to include the brunch of the misfits of Saltpeter, which really shouldn’t be added on principle since it happens in Leaf Ann Smith’s train station anyways.
Now back to the Brunch, something very important is about to happen, There will be a rather large toast to the group. This is on account of it being the 3rd anniversary of the start of the groups monthly meetings. Somehow that is a point of pride among the members due to how it is the longest any Brunch group in Saltpeter has lasted after the Infamous Brunch fights 20 years ago. The Brunch fights were a rather dreary matter for such a pleasant pastime. 27 dead and 63 injured over a week. All because of bad French Toast at an upscale restaurant near downtown Saltpeter. And when I say bad, I mean bad, it was soggy, barely toasted, and didn’t have any fruits except the one eating it. It’s not even like Saltpeter doesn’t have any strawberries, it was built on the largest strawberry farm west of the Mississippi. How do you fuck up French Toast that badly? How? It perplexes the mind.
Oh right, the Toast to the Brunch crew, A tall woman in a Green Dress, a leather Jacket and Golden Hoop earrings stands up, her hair is cut in a pixie cut. She grabs a Mimosa off the table and begins to talk. Hurricane Jane Rivers as they call her is many things, a lesbian, crazy, a storm chaser, dangerous, a purveyor of Pancakes, a painter and an aerial ace, but one thing she is certainly not is concise. It would take 7 paragraphs to summarize her speech to that disparate group of oddities. In short though, she was thanking them for the best 3 years of her life. Little did she know, only half of them would see her next month.
As her glass hits the glass of another member of the Brunch, a clink rings through the air. Followed by a harsh silence.
A tick of a second
Then with a large creaking boom, the train comes to a screeching halt outside the station, passengers get off as Leaf Ann Smith scrambles to hide her current mess of a Diner from the view of the wealthy tourists from down the tracks. The train is early for once. Precisely 17 minutes and 6 seconds early, something that should not have been possible given the fact that the train tracks were under repairs between Omaha and Saltpeter. And the train had a 2 minute delay when it arrived at the last station. This is all irrelevant if not to show how off guard it caught Leaf Ann Smith who usually manages to keep incredibly on top of the schedules of the train so she can run the station and Diner at once. Leaf Ann Smith is a busy Woman between the Diner, the Station and her time moonlighting as the union negotiator for between the carpenters guild and Sylvia Ink the sole crafter of fountain pens in Saltpeter and a person notoriously bad at paying their union dues. Now in a hurry, she rushes to kick out the Brunch party and clean up the messes left behind in her diner today. She had to rush the 20 people out for a rather simple reason. She needs money to run a diner and the train is what brings her the best customers each day. The customers from grand cities like Chicago, Denver and Omaha. As the crowd of weirdos and homosexuals scurries away. One Slyvia Ink bumps right into a Jim Halder. The only man in the city who still knows their face.
Jim Halder is a professor at the University of Saltpeter and has 40 years of Tenure there, starting as a professor at 31, despite being in his 70s, he looks rather young, with a smooth face and deep black hair, this however is a lie. If you look closely at his hair, you’ll notice a long white steak and an indent on his face above his left eye. This is because Jim’s face is not his first, while studying in the mines of Saltpeter, his face was burned off by a explosion, and a new wooden one had to be constructed by Sylvia Ink, one of the only 4 things they ever completed that wasn’t a fountain pen, the other 3 are another less lifelike mask, the hilt of a blade, and pen holder to hold their pens. Jim is a man of learning, giving every book he writes to the library after he publishes it, 14 of the books that are currently checked out were donated by him. If you were to inspect Jim closely you would also find that you could knock him over quite easily with a single punch due to his slim frame. The university that he works at is not considered a cultural institution by even the most generous people in Saltpeter because nothing of interest has been produced in that institution for just over 67 years. Well apart from Sylvia Ink and Jim Halder, and their incredible works of course, the two little wooden people of Saltpeter.
Jim was naturally surprised to see Sylvia at the station, but glad nonetheless to see that young fellow out of the workshop. When they bumped into each other, quite literally, as Sylvia had been too focused on a croissant to notice the man ahead of him. He proposed to the young carpenter that they go over to the old river park for a stroll to discuss the terms for the new project.
Despite being a chilly 50 degrees out, if you were to head across town from the rail station, over to the river. You will find 2 men on the banks of the river. One is sitting in a rather large Sycamore tree, reading a book, when he hears the train rush past. He is wearing a blue sweater and long pants, the other man is dressed quite poorly for the weather, he is wearing nothing but a swimsuit and his golden locks of hair. He stupidly planned on Swimming in the river today. He is 6 feet tall and somehow not freezing. These peculiar fellows meant to be at the brunch but the one in the Sweater, Alex Cela had set his pocket watch 3 hours behind. Even knowing this now, he was still caught off guard by the train crossing over the river since the train had not been early in 3 months. Despite being totally different, one a bit of an idiot and the other a top marks student at the University of Saltpeter, they have been dating for 2 months, and six days if either had remembered to keep track of that. They met at the park, Alex was trying to paint the trains and Damien had been trying to teach a cat how to swim, the pair of them instantly became friends after Alex stopped trying to attack Damien for ruining the painting. And the two started dating a week after they met, when Damien kissed Alex under an Oak tree in the town square. These 2 lovers were not however the only people in the park. There were about 400 people in the park give or take 27 on this chilly morning. But none of them particularly matter, none of them except for Emily Rock.
Emily Rock is a unique woman, it’s hard to like her, but easy to understand her. The first 3 words that come to mind about her are angry, pretty, and rude, she is only two of these.The reason many of her peers tend to dislike her is simple, she’s tired, angry, and rather blunt. She’s tired of her classmates at the university, this miserable city, the man on 7th street, and of course she’s tired of her father who refuses to give her that damn amulet. What with it being promised to her in the will and everything. Another thing she is tired of is the incredible dullness of the man she works with at the shop, his name is Danny, and she is uncertain if he has a personality. Something she has made clear to him. Now Emily is a pretty woman like they say, she has long blond curls and a tan face, if you care about clothes, she’s wearing a blue skirt and a pink tank top, she’s current reading the morning paper, when an idiot brat of a child steps on her foot running past her bench. Her morning is already ruined, so she decides if nothing else, she should pick a fight, it might cheer her up. What after the argument with her father over the amulet last night, and now that child, she deserves to make someone miserable. As she walks down the river bank she spots him, a man with golden hair and a large frame, the kind of man she thinks would be stupid enough to steal her pet Rabbit “Mr. Flopsy”.
On the other side of the river sit two scientists, a carpenter and a professor, the two wooden men as they call them, one looks young but is old in years, the other’s age is impossible to tell at a glance, they wear a wooden mask and have cyan hair in a low ponytail. The one in the obvious mask is slightly shorter, and is carving a piece of wood with a short knife. The taller one, in a button up vest begins to speak,
“I know that you have a need for something more interesting than this city, Sylvia. I propose that we make a new excursion from this miserable city. I have enough savings for 2 tickets on the train to Chicago.”
The small masked person looks back at Halder, their head tilted as if to ask a simple question, why?
“Why, you ask. I have evidence that the scientists up in Chicago have found a sample of Chestnut, which as we know could be used by the project.
The short one shakes its head to tell Halder their disbelief in that notion.
“You don’t believe me child? Then tell me what the point of that project is. It can’t be built without chestnut wood and we both know it. If you think it’s a myth or dead or lost or some other thing, then tell me the truth, why did you build it?”
At this mere suggestion of disbelief, Slyvia stops, throws the pen they have been crafting to the ground and begins to point their whittling knife at the Elderly man. A tear roll out from under the mask.
“Alright, I know that is a touchy subject, here let me pick up the pen, I know why you started it, we both have our white whales of course. I would react similarly if you tried to stop me of course. How about we leave the park, this reminds me of your last day in my class far too much.”
“Besides, we have a train to catch, I forgot to show you this”
Out of his hand slips a photo of the Chicago River, around the ruins lies a single tree, the last pure American Chestnut Tree. At the sight of this Slyvia’s head pops up and begins to run towards the hill. Jim turns around as he sees the younger individual start to run and turns around to chase them.
As they begin to leave the park they hear shouting, coming from across the river, as a woman seems to be trying to pick a fight with the man currently swimming in the river. But they are not about to witness the only fight in the city this morning. In the city center one Maria Fernando is riding the trolley over to the library to do some research when she notices the fellow with the bee hives has been following her, she would have their name but never actually heard it when they started coming to Brunch about a year ago and she would be far too embarrassed to ask now, Maria Fernando is a headstrong and determined woman, but you can never get her to actually admit to not knowing something, she now prides herself on knowing more than anyone in this 3rd rate mining town. She wishes she could see the face of the Beekeeper, then she would know whether she could trust them, that’s why she doesn’t trust Sylvia Ink, it’s that damn mask and the incident in the Saltpeter mines of course, that whole thing is confusing. She can tell, she just knows for a fact that that damn beekeeper is staring at her, and then she spots her destination, the Library square, she quickly jumps off the Trolley and lands on the ground, falling over and tumbling for a good 10 feet with her briefcase in hand. She then briskly gets up and puffs the dust off her red dress. She runs into the Library and without talking to the Libarians for once she runs in the stacks, she looks back and yep, that freakish beekeeper fucking followed her. As she hides, she reaches towards her briefcase to open it when she sees the Beekeeper grab a book off the shelf and start to move away from the shelves. She closes the Briefcase backup and wipes the sweat off her brow, she was so paranoid about the beekeeper and for nothing. But she did have a good reason to be paranoid when entering the library that day because someone was right behind her. And,
POW!!
She is hit on the head with a large book. Now because Maria has already fallen over, so she can’t see this, but another person, the beekeeper and another patron of the Library have also been hit with the book.
As Maria opens her eyes, she finds herself in a dark room, with 5 other people, she is tied up alongside 2 others, one is the Beekeeper, the other is the most boring man she has ever seen, he looks familiar but she doesn’t know from where. She could have seen his face a thousand times and not recognized it, because she had. In fact she had seen him earlier that day at Brunch, He is wearing a white tank top and blue jeans, he has medium length brown hair and about no other interesting characteristics, but she wouldn’t remember seeing him, he would be one of the 7 people she never would remember, not even after talking too, but this would be the last time she would see him and still forget him. Suddenly a pair of Women enter the light, one being Sunny Rus and the other being Elise Rosa, they are 2 of the 3 librarians at the Saltpeter Library and both are typically good friends of Maria, they were even just at brunch discussing how to acquire several old 23rd century novels for the museum.
Sunny steps forward and bites into an orange, peel and all, it’s a strange habit of hers that nobody really understands. She then spits the peel out, hitting Maria in the Face, this part is unfortunately all too common for Maria, dealing with Sunny’s surprising lack of manners for such a pleasant looking woman was an annoying commonality. It is impossible to find her outside a sundress even on a chilly day like today. She begins to say something in a commanding tone of voice like a military officer, in fact if you put her in a coat and shaved her hair, she could have passed for one at this moment.
“Look I know none of you would steal our delivery of a particularly difficult to find object from Chicago, but given its value, I think we will all agree this is the only logical course of action,” Sunny says to the group, in an alert tone.
Maria is confused by this given that the only things that were collected by Sunny were books and strangely photographs of a fruit that had been extinct for 300 years. She knew that the fruit pictures were pretty much worthless and most valuable books were held by the elites of Chicago and Denver, the Barons and Lords of what remained, those with wealth that far exceeded what could be found in Saltpeter. Suddenly she realized what Sunny had done as all heads in the room rapidly turned at the sound of a gunshot outside the library. It became clear that Sunny had set her sights on something truly valuable for the Library collection
Macmillan Dev-ill was a strange man, for one he was on call of every last baron, lord, and prince in Chicago on those Bell telephones that had swept across the prairie. It was a result of his rare profession. How does one put the actions of this man delicately, well let’s say he dealt with people’s final moments for a hefty price. To put it bluntly, he was a killer. Today he was holed up on the roof of a library in a mediocre forgotten rail town of about 63 thousand people. He was waiting for a small balding man from Omaha to arrive. That man had a copy of the Codex Americana, a fabled book with only 3 remaining copies all of which were handwritten by the 18 monks of Madison; they lived in a monastery that overlooked one of the last great waterways in the continent, they call it the Ohio. The Codex chronicled the history of America from the settlers to the 5 Unions to the empires of Chicago and San Francisco and their falls into dust like all great civilisations before them. He was hired to reacquire the epic so that it couldn’t fall into the hands of those outside Chicago, specifically he was hired by the heir of the Family who commissioned it, the Christopher Fleming of the House Fleming.
After 17 hours he saw 2 things, first a dark haired woman and a beekeeper came running into the Library, making him alert again and then he saw his mark a small oaf, whose name will be forgotten by history. What mattered was what he carried, a box holding a particularly rare book.
He was on the steps when it happened when it went - BANG!!
7 people came running out about a minute later, but it was too late, Dev-ill had already gotten down, grabbed the box and started towards the train station back to Chicago.
It’s been 1 hour since Maria saw the blood on the steps of the grand library. It has been 57 minutes since she was told to head to the Train station to try and get the book, whatever book it was back and For the past roughly 3 minutes, Maria Fernando has stood almost still, an incredible rarity, she is waiting outside the train station, ticket in her hand, she is both preparing herself to see the immortal city, the last great city of the American Age, and trying to deal with the death she has seen, not just today but constantly over the past 16 years. As she looks back at the city of Saltpeter for one last glance of her home fill her with hope, the whole city is visible from the rail station on a hill, it was moved up hill and north about a mile about 200 years ago after a devastating flood, but nobody knows that now, history is easily lost in Saltpeter. The libraries know this, but nobody bothers to remember what happened in this city all those years ago. With one last gulp of the air, she lifts up her briefcases and runs to catch up with her companions. If she has to go to Chicago, then at least she is going with people she knows even if it is against her will, and at least if its not people she knows, then at least its people she’s met. And Danny Jones, he is also there.
As she climbs up the stairs to Leaf Ann Smith’s station she can smell the exciting smell of eggs and coal smoke, a mix you can only find at two places, an incredibly rustic bakery and the Saltpeter Train Station. The Coal is there because Leaf Ann Smith is known by certain groups in the city, but thankfully not the California Zephyr Authority of Denver to steal coal for the Diner she runs in the train station on the edge of the city in a large garden. Maria is ready to leave now, she wipes away tears that are beginning to form and begins to shift through her pockets to find the ticket. She produces it and feeds it to the ticket machine, it spits the ticket back out alongside a mix of currencies, the only 2 of interest to her being 6 Saltpeter Tins and 7 Chicagan Dollars, about enough for a Coffee and a biscuit on the train for the second day, she was glad the Machine was still broken like she had heard and would always give change, for the simple reason that she couldn’t buy the coffee otherwise. When the gate pops open, she sees that the train is in the station and runs on not looking for her company on that journey. If she had looked she would notice that the Zephyr remarkably managed to hold all but 2 of the members of her Brunch party from Yesterday. The 2 who weren’t on the Train included Hurricane Jane Rivers, who while not on a train is also heading towards Chicago on that night, this is because of the sudden news She had heard at the airfield that afternoon. That day every single individual of any relevance was on their way to the last of the Great American Cities, the city of myths and dreams, the heart and birthplace of empires, Chicago.
